


A Plain Morning

by ameliajean



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliajean/pseuds/ameliajean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When the day is fresh I’m coming home again<br/>It’s warmer where you’re waiting; it feels more like July<br/>There’s pillows in their cases, and one of those is mine</i>
</p><p>"A Plain Morning" // Dashboard Confessional</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Plain Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A_Girl_In_Port](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Girl_In_Port/gifts).



> Post-Reichenbach.

There is some warning, after all, because they trust one another enough to know that the anger and shock will dissipate like the soft wisps of steam rising from John's cup of tea.

There's a second cup sitting, cooling, beside a file-folder filled with "evidence" and all the things that John managed to compile in the interim; always _the interim_ , because he never stopped believing.

It's a bit cooler than it ought to be in March and a gust of wind swirls fauna, new life, against the sidewalk where it's already overgrown through the cracks alongside the kerbside bistro. The sky is preternaturally absent of clouds and decidedly, perfectly normal. There isn't rain or snow or darkness lurking just behind an orange-purple horizon.

No, this is just a plain Spring morning.

This is the morning Sherlock Holmes returns.

There have been texts (eleven to be exact) and there have been stretches of long silence between each. But when they came, oh, John didn't faint or hyperventilate or curse the empty flat.

_I knew. - JW_

And that was that.

Sherlock rounds the corner and they spot one another immediately. Neither looks away, nor does John rise to greet him. Sherlock takes the seat opposite John and curls his fingers around the still-warm cup of tea. He gazes into it, to the torn-open packets of sugar on the table, and the hint of a smile graces his lips.

"How long did you know?" he asks.

John leans forward on his elbows, hands bundled together beneath his chin, and lets a single laugh reverberate in his throat.

"Always," he replies. Their eyes meet again and John's voice softens. "I have waited..."

"As have I," Sherlock sips his tea and the cup clanks against the table when he sets it down. The pad of his thumb runs across the lip and there isn't a chasm or volatile fault line situated between them; it was never going to be an extraordinary reunion with swelling music or broken knuckles.

"We haven't got a thing to eat at the flat. Thought we might walk around the shops a bit, get some fresh air? I know you'd like to get home," John says, and lets the thought trail into silence. He doesn't need to complete it.

He doesn't need to say _"You know I'd like to get you home."_

They abandon the kerbside bistro and ordinary cups of tea and stand to face one another—it happens by accident, that. Sherlock adjusts his coat and John looks up to say something else, something not worth remembering at all.

Sherlock extends a hand and John takes it.

John tucks the folder under his arm for later.

On a plain morning in March, they buy cereal and apples and those biscuits with the chocolate at the edges. Their palms don't sweat and the sky doesn't crack open. John's thumb traces each bump of Sherlock's knuckles and neither of them remarks upon it.

They didn't previously; they wouldn't now.

When morning stretches into afternoon and afternoon stretches into evening, the sun sets in the west and the blue toothbrush by the sink is wet for the first time in eighteen months. Creases gently ease away in soft cotton and sheets bunch together in the right places. A splash of black curls against the starch-white pillow beside John's eases the tension in his chest.

There isn't a steeple of fingers beneath Sherlock's chin because they're twined at his side, with five others that feel exactly like home.

"How long would you have waited?" he asks quietly.

John brings their hands to his lips and places a kiss to the tangle of fingers.

"For this?"

He laughs once more, barely audible; Sherlock feels it more than he hears it.

They fall asleep with a slice of cooled bedclothes between them.

They'll wake to another plain morning—one of those mornings out of a Virginia Woolf novel, where nothing extraordinary happens, but one remembers it later as one of _those mornings_.

_And how long will you stay, when you return? - JW_

(It was his first question.)

_As long as you'll have me. - SH_

(It was his last declaration on the subject.)

They'll wake to decent weather and murmured _goodmornings_.

And they'll wake to thousands more, just like that.


End file.
